Artists Taking Over Billboards Across America

Look up.

You may see work by your favorite artist.

With seemingly everything at stake this fall, artists across the nation are leaving their studios and galleries and taking it to the streets. They’re using billboards to share their messages seeking societal change.

In New York City, “Art4Equality x Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness” occupies 10 billboards along with a gallery exhibition at The Untitled Space featuring the work of over 50 contemporary artists. The exhibit and public art series is presented in collaboration with SaveArtSpace and Art4Equality, an initiative supporting the creation of equality themed exhibitions and public art.

The project is curated by Indira Cesarine, founder of The Untitled Space and Art4Equality. The gallery will feature the unique artworks displayed on the billboards (presented by SaveArtSpace) along with an exhibition of many additional works in a variety of mediums inspired by the words “Equality,” “Life,” “Liberty” and “The Pursuit of Happiness,” which will be on view at the gallery through November 3.

SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization founded in Brooklyn in 2015 working to create an urban gallery experience, presenting exhibitions it hopes foster progressive messages of social change.

“Realities of social inequality and racial injustice are challenging our ability to have confidence in a promising future,” Cesarine said through her curatorial statement announcing the project. “With the 2020 elections approaching, I felt that it was a crucial time to create an opportunity for artists to respond, with the artwork presented in a public platform where it can reach an audience of millions of people every day and promote an inclusive dialogue.”

Also in New York and also in conjunction with SaveArtSpace, Art at a Time Like This debuts billboards around the city beginning October 12 through its “Ministry of Truth: 1984-2020” public art exhibition.

The title, “Ministry of Truth,” references the fictional government ministry from George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four responsible for the “necessary” falsification of historical events. Orwell’s Ministry of Truth actually operates as a propaganda machine using the news media, entertainment, fine arts and education to manipulate the public and promote its slogans: "WAR IS PEACE," "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY" and "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

In Philadelphia, superstar contemporary artist Carrie Mae Weems takes center stage partnering with University of the Arts. She’s helping reach minority communities which have been most deeply affected by the COVID-19 crisis, installing her public art project, Resist COVID Take 6!, prominently in the city’s downtown near the campus.

The project encourages the general public to “Take 6,” or practice social distancing by maintaining six feet of distance, in addition to promoting safety in Black and Brown communities through health education.

Why can messages from artists have greater impact than the same information coming from the government or mass media?

“I think what's different is how artists make us feel, they are such careful observers of our world and speak with honesty, even brutal honesty at times, about what it's like to be human, how it feels in our world today,” University of the Arts President David Yager told Forbes.com. “When Carrie says something like, ‘we'll hold hands again,’ it's remarkably simple, but I mean, wow, it's amazing how it makes you feel, and how you connect to it.”

Weems has been doing that for years. She was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship in 2013—also known as the “genius award”–and was the first Black woman to have a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

It would be natural to question how artists, particularly Black and Brown artists who find their communities bearing the brunt of COVID-19 deaths, unabated police brutality and a rising volume of white supremacy across the nation, are able to stay productive in 2020. Yager, an artist himself, knows the answer.

“Part of being a creative is adapting to constraint and difficulty, ask any artist about their first critique,” he said. “Have you ever thought about what it must be like to pour your heart into a work and then have it critiqued and picked apart by a room full of others? That's what we do every day… I can't think of any other group that would rise to this challenge better than a community of artists.”

Weems’ Resist COVID Take 6! project will also be seen on the campuses of Syracuse University, where she is an artist in residence, Duke University, Fisk University and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where they will also be displayed at the Frist Art Museum as part of Vanderbilt’s Engine for Art Democracy and Justice initiative, as well as in Brooklyn and Atlanta.

Finally, in Western Pennsylvania’s Westmoreland County, a 2020 election swing county in a swing state, The Westmoreland Diversity Coalition and The Westmoreland Museum of American Art selected 10 artists for its Diversity Billboard Art Project, a public art campaign displaying 10 new works of art on billboards around the County. Each artist was commissioned to create an original artwork, inspired by the theme “Make Our Differences Our Strengths,” that visually conveys how diversity and inclusion can make Westmoreland County communities stronger.

“Westmoreland County is in a very important place during this time because of the election, so the fact that we are taking up some of that space of political messages and bringing this message of unity, acceptance and inclusion, I think is very important,” Sheila Cuellar-Shaffer, Lead Artist for the Diversity Billboard Art Project, told Forbes.com. “When we talk about art, people usually have to go to places to see art, public art is out there–the billboards are out there–you are in front of them, you don’t go look for them, they’re right there for you, that’s important for the general population to be able to see all of those images.”